otabdeveloper4 3 days ago

Probably nothing. "Expose the database to the pointy-haired boss directly, as a service" is an idea as old a computing itself. Even SQL itself was originally an iteration of that idea. Every BI system (including PowerBI and Tableau) were supposed to be that.

It doesn't work because the PHB doesn't have the domain knowledge and doesn't know which questions to ask. (No, it's never as simple as group-by and top-5.)

2
jaccola 3 days ago

I would say SQL still is that! My wife had to learn some SQL to pull reports in some non-tech finance job 10 years ago. (I think she still believes this is what I do all day…)

I suppose this could be useful in that it prevents everyone in the company having to learn even the basics of SQL which is some barrier, however minimal.

Also the LLM will presumably be able to see all the tables/fields and ‘understand’ them (with the big assumption that they are even remotely reasonably named) so English language queries will be much more feasible now. Basically what LLMs have over all those older attempts is REALLY good fuzziness.

I see this being useful for some subset of questions.

pclmulqdq 3 days ago

A family friend maintains a SQL database of her knitting projects that she does as a hobby. The PHB can easily learn SQL if they want.

conradfr 3 days ago

But he doesn't.

The project manager also won't learn behat and write tests.

Your client also won't use the CMS to update their website.